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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - December 17, 2009
Lieberman Gets Ex-Party to Shift on Health Plan
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The New York Times
WASHINGTON ? Just the thought of Joseph I. Lieberman makes
some Democrats want to spit nails these days. But Mr.
Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, is not the least
troubled by his status as Capitol Hill's master infuriator
? and on Monday he showed how powerful that role can be at
a time when Democrats cannot spare a single vote.
The day before, Mr. Lieberman threatened on national
television to join the Republicans in blocking the health
care bill, President Obama's chief domestic initiative.
Within hours, he was in a meeting at the Capitol with top
White House officials.
And on Monday night, Democratic senators emerged from a
tense 90-minute closed-door session and suggested that
they were on the verge of bowing to Mr. Lieberman's main
demands: that they scrap a plan to let people buy into
Medicare beginning at age 55, and scotch even a fallback
version of a new government-run health insurance plan, or
public option.
Mr. Lieberman said he believed that the Medicare expansion
was off the table, though he did not get any guarantee.
"Not an explicit assurance, no," he said. "But put me down
tonight as encouraged at the direction in which these
discussions are going."
Mr. Lieberman could not be happier. He is right where he
wants to be ? at the center of the political aisle, the
center of the Democrats' efforts to win 60 votes for their
sweeping health care legislation. For the moment, he is at
the center of everything ? and he loves it.
"My wife said to me, 'Why do you always end up being the
point person here?'" he said, flashing a broad grin in an
interview on Monday.
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Just hours after his televised threat to kill the bill,
Mr. Lieberman said, he left a meeting with Senate leaders
and top White House officials in the office of the majority
leader, Harry Reid, more certain than ever that he held
all the cards.
"Harry said, 'We will do what we can do to secure this,'"
Mr. Lieberman recalled. "He said, 'I have got some work to
do with other members of the caucus.' But he said, 'My own
feeling is we need you to get to 60 and so I am going to
do my best.'"
Many Democrats say they have given up trying to divine the
motivations of Mr. Lieberman. Some have suggested that he
is catering to insurance industry interests back home.
Others say he realizes that he cannot win re-election in
2012 without appealing to Republicans and independents,
especially because Democrats will be energized with Mr.
Obama running that year.
Mr. Lieberman says he favors the essential elements of the
health care legislation but fears that expanding government
programs would compound the federal debt. Mr. Lieberman,
who lost a Democratic primary in 2006, won re-election as
an independent and campaigned aggressively against Mr.
Obama last year, said he felt "liberated" from party
loyalty.
Perhaps no one confounds Mr. Reid and Senate Democrats
more. And back in Connecticut, the anger is often raw.
"If you think you are sick of Joe Lieberman now," Jim Shea,
a columnist in The Hartford Courant, wrote Monday, "just
wait until you get sick." Liberal bloggers have attacked
him as "a joke" and worse.
Mr. Lieberman's threat to block the bill blew up a proposed
deal among the Democratic caucus that Mr. Reid had hailed
as a breakthrough.
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After the meeting on Monday evening, Senate Democratic
leaders said they still hoped to pass the bill before
Christmas, and Mr. Obama invited the caucus to the White
House on Tuesday for more talks.
Democratic leaders said they were caught off guard on
Sunday morning by Mr. Lieberman's threat and accused him
of acting in bad faith. His comments sent White House
officials, including the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel,
scrambling to the Capitol for a meeting to pinpoint where
he stood.
Democratic leaders noted that Mr. Lieberman on numerous
occasions had voiced support for the Medicare buy-in
proposal that he now wants dropped. It was part of a
health care proposal that he championed as Al Gore's
running mate in the 2000 presidential race, and three
months ago he expressed support for the same concept.
"What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy
into Medicare early," Mr. Lieberman says on a video
distributed by Democrats on Monday.
In the interview, he did not dispute that he once supported
the idea but said he had not recalled having done so, or
the context, until Mr. Reid's office confronted him about
it.
Campaign finance advocates have attacked Mr. Lieberman as
"an insurance industry puppet," suggesting that he wants
to protect private health insurers from competition because
he has received more than $1 million insurance company
campaign contributions since 1998.
During his 2006 re-election campaign, Mr. Lieberman ranked
second in the Senate in insurance industry contributions.
Connecticut is a hub of the insurance business, with about
22,000 jobs specifically in health insurance, according to
an industry trade group.
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In the interview, Mr. Lieberman dismissed assertions that
he was doing the industry's bidding. "It's hogwash and
it's weak," he said, noting that he had often sided against
the companies. He said he favored a proposal, not included
in the health care bill, that would end the insurers'
limited exemption from federal antitrust laws.
Mr. Lieberman complained that some people had begun attack-
ing his wife, Hadassah, urging that she be fired from her
job at a nonprofit organization that fights breast cancer,
because she previously worked in public relations for two
pharmaceutical companies.
Mr. Lieberman's opposition to a bigger government role in
health care runs counter to public opinion in his state,
according to polls. In a Quinnipiac College survey last
month, a majority of voters said they supported a so-
called public option.
Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac poll, said
the profile of Mr. Lieberman's public support suggested he
was shifting into a moderate Republican. Mr. Lieberman
insisted that it was his liberal colleagues who were hold-
ing the health care bill hostage.
"People have said to me, including some people in the
caucus: 'We know you are for health care reform. You know
how important this is to the president. Would you yourself
stop this from happening?'" he said.
"So I say: 'There is a wonderful core health care reform
bill on the Senate floor. Would my liberal friends in the
caucus stop that from happening and prevent the president
from getting this major goal that he has set because they
want to add more on to that? Why won't they be reasonable?'"
Robert Pear and Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
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